“Due to being made up of cells, virtually all “ancestral foods” have markedly lower carbohydrate densities than flour- and sugar-containing foods, a property quite independent of glycemic index… The present hypothesis suggests that in parallel with the bacterial effects of sugars on dental and periodontal health, acellular flours, sugars, and processed foods produce an inflammatory microbiota via the upper gastrointestinal tract, with fat able to effect a “double hit” by increasing systemic absorption of lipopolysaccharide. This model is consistent with a broad spectrum of reported dietary phenomena.”

“After weighting for potential confounders, missing covariate data, and dropout, ever-use of two pesticide classes, fumigants and organochlorine insecticides, and seven individual pesticides… were all positively associated with depression in each case group, with ORs between 1.1 and 1.9.”

“Purpose in life has been linked with better health (mental and physical) and health behaviors, but its link with patterns of health care use are understudied… Participants (n = 7,168) were drawn from the Health and Retirement Study, a nationally representative panel study of American adults over the age of 50, and tracked for 6 y. After adjusting for sociodemographic factors, each unit increase in purpose (on a six-point scale) was associated with a higher likelihood that people would obtain a cholesterol test… or colonoscopy… Furthermore, females were more likely to receive a mammogram/X-ray… or pap smear…, and males were more likely to receive a prostate examination… Each unit increase in purpose was also associated with 17% fewer nights spent in the hospital…”

“Sixty-nine percent of children were exposed to antibiotics before age 24 months, with a mean (SD) of 2.3 (1.5) episodes per child. Cumulative exposure to antibiotics was associated with later obesity…; this effect was stronger for broad-spectrum antibiotics… Early exposure to broad-spectrum antibiotics was also associated with obesity… but narrow-spectrum drugs were not at any age or frequency.”

“In young, female lupus-prone mice resembling women at childbearing age, a population with the highest risk for lupus, we found marked depletion of lactobacilli, and increases in Lachnospiraceae and overall diversity compared to age-matched healthy controls… our results demonstrate the dynamics of gut microbiota in murine lupus and provide evidence to suggest the use of probiotic lactobacilli and retinoic acid as dietary supplements to relieve inflammatory flares in lupus patients.”

“we apply these tools to compare resting-state functional brain activity in 15 healthy volunteers after intravenous infusion of placebo and psilocybin—the main psychoactive component of magic mushrooms. The results show that the homological structure of the brain’s functional patterns undergoes a dramatic change post-psilocybin, characterized by the appearance of many transient structures of low stability and of a small number of persistent ones that are not observed in the case of placebo.”